Arhivski vjesnik, Vol. 51 No. 1, 2008.
Biography
Commemorating the 150th anniversary of his birth
Zlatko Matijevic
; Hrvatski institut za povijest, Zagreb , Hrvatska
Abstract
150 years have passed since the birth of Ivan Bojničić, a long-time director of the Croatian State Archives (then called Royal Land Archives). A historian and an archivist (Valpovo, 1858 — Zagreb, 1925), he was born in the family of the old Croatian nobility. He earned degrees in law and philosophy in Budapest where he also got his PhD in 1880 with the thesis entitled The forging of manuscripts during the Middle Ages. He started to work as an apprentice in the library of The People’s Museum in Budapest (1877-1879) and then he worked as a desk officer in the archaeological department of the People’s Museum in Zagreb (1879-1892). During the years 1892-1925 he is the director of the Croatian Land Archives in Zagreb. Together with his regular duties, he was also a language instructor for the Hungarian language at Zagreb’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (since 1882) and as a non-regular professor in the years 1910-1922. He was also a member of the Board for the preservation of the artistic and historical monuments in the Kingdoms of Croatia and Slavonia (1911-1915), a court advisor (1914-1918) and member of the Croatian parliament from the People’s Party for the outer county of Đakovo. In 1889 he became a clerk representing Croatia in the Hungarian ethnological society. He was a secretary of the Croatian archaeological society (1889-1893) and in 1885 at the suggestion of Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski he was appointed a member of the Board for the renovation of the Archives. In 1885 he became a secretary and in 1903-1918 a vice-president of the Art Society. Working for 33 years as a director of the Archives in Zagreb, Bojničić is particularly responsible for its decoration. By his intervention, in 1912 the Archives was moved to the east wing of the newly built National library and thusly gained contemporary rooms. In 1899 he started publishing the journal The herald of the Royal Croatian-Slavonian-Dalmatian Land Archives (today Archival Herald) and edited 21 volumes, i.e. its entire first series (1899-1920) and also started editing the second one in 1925. He was also an honorary member of the Croatian antiquarian society in Knin and one of the first members of the Brethren of the Croatian Dragon. Bojničić’s scientific and professional interests were very wide and covered different cultural and historical fields: political history, historical folklore, witch hunt, jewellery, fashion, the lives of the ladies from high society in the past, heraldry, sphragistics, diplomatics, genealogy, numismatics, archaeology, history of the nobility etc. His most renowned scientific work is Der Adel von Kroatien und Slavonien, a groundbreaking work for the history of the Croatian nobility, published in 10 volumes in the years 1896-1899. His numerous scientific and popular works are written in Croatian, Hungarian and German language and are scattered in many journals, papers and miscellanies. Bojničić was also a distinguished translator of the scientific writings (N. Klaić, N. Tomašić). He received several important indigenous and foreign recognitions. Bibliography of Bojničić’s work written by Emilij Laszowski and published in 1926 in The Herald of
State Archives is also featured in this paper.
Keywords
Ivan pl. Bojničić; Bojničić family; Croatian archaeological society; Herald of the society for arts and artistic crafts; Art society in Zagreb; Croatian State Archives; Archival Herald; Croatian Nobility; »Der Adel von Kroatien und Slavonien«; bibliograph
Hrčak ID:
30397
URI
Publication date:
8.12.2008.
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